BSG on BBC America

Maureen Ryan talked to Mary McDonnell about Battlestar Galactica coming to BBC America on Saturday, June 11th, and about Mary's upcoming staring role in a spin off of TNT's The Closer, called Major Crimes.

Comic-Con 2010: the CAPRICA panel

James Marsters and Sasha Roiz

The FemmeBot has posted youtube video of the entire panel, featuring Ronald D. Moore, David Eick, Sasha Roiz, Alessandra Torressani, and James Marsters.

Part 1 is below, the rest is over here.

For more news about Caprica at SDCC, also check out Caprica TV who are agreggating lots of news all weekend.

"I've heard this story before..." David Eick pulls out the Patron to do shots while Ron Moore explains how Caprica is similar to Dallas

"Shots, anyone?" Panel moderator Geoff Boucher decides now is the time to ask Moore about a Caprica season two. Good move!

An Evening With Caprica

Those of us who made it to the CAPRICA panel event at the New York Paley Center tonight got an unexpected treat: advance screenings of both this week's new episode and next week's mid-season finale! Unfortunately for me, I was late and only got to see the latter (written by BSG alum Michael Taylor btw). It was... astoundingly action-packed, with cliffhangers galore! Also, you get the unique joy of seeing James Marsters say the words: SO SAY WE ALL. Frak yeah.

The Q&A panel after the screening with Ron Moore, David Eick, Syfy's Mark Stern, and castmembers Esai Morales, Sasha Roiz, Alessandra Torressani and Magda Apanowicz was a lot of fun and quite informative. Those Adama brothers are a hoot...

A couple of highlights gleaned at the panel:
- No one would say exactly when the second half of CAPRICA season one will air (although SyFy has apparently told the press October 2010). And despite the rumors from earlier this month, no one mentioned CAPRICA getting renewed, or any other new BSG spinoff ideas. Keep your fingers crossed.
- Ron Moore confirmed that we will visit two other colonies in the next set of episodes after the hiatus: Gemenon and Tauron.
- When asked if an ending has already been worked out for this series, Moore and Eick say they have not done that yet, it is too soon. They see around six organic endpoints, each is a landmark event within the timeline between the current present on the show through to the events of the BSG miniseries.
- Esai Morales says that big changes are afoot for Joseph Adama in the back half of the season, following some crucial developments we saw tonight in the mid-season finale.
- Sasha Roiz got his role as Sam Adama after auditioning for the role of Tomas Vergis (Graystone's business rival). James Marsters was being considered originally for the role of Vergis as well... but his unique talents seemed much more suited to Barnabus.
- To answer a question I got this evening: NO, Michelle Forbes does not have a cameo in CAPRICA 109. That's just someone who looks like her a bit.

OK I'm tired. Goodnight for now -- meanwhile, for the rest of you who attended tonight, please leave your (NON SPOILERY) thoughts in the comments. Did you enjoy this week's new episode? Did anyone post panel video on youtube yet? Etc.

ETA Thursday AM:

The Paley Center did a great livetweet of the event last night.

At the Syfy upfronts this week, Esai Morales elaborated further to io9 about "the wringer" Joe Adama will go through in 1.5, and says that CAPRICA's renewal is still up in the air:

We don't know when we're going to get picked up, so my choices are limited – I can't go out for pilots, but I don't want to because I really enjoy [Caprica]. I enjoy doing television for people with brains. ...I like that the show makes you think, and it sells ideas. It sells questions. It sells perspectives. Do you believe in one god or many or none? There's no good or bad – there's good or bad deeds. As they say in the Bible, God loves the sinner, not the sin. ...This show makes you think. If you want to scratch the surface, you'll get something more than backdrop.

On CAPRICA, ratings, pacing, and the future.

Airlock Alpha spoke to SyFy executive Mark Stern this week and let him expound on why the network is 100% behind their new series CAPRICA. Stern says the network is supporting the show "for the long haul," and fans should not let early ratings news get them down or make assumptions about the show's future. Not surprising for a BSG-based show, the DVR+7 ratings are actually higher than expected despite the live Friday ratings being lower than BSG's ever were.

Stern also has some interesting things to say about what is coming up in the next few episodes before the mid-season break. After we see the rest of the first 10 episodes, CAPRICA goes on hiatus until late summer.

Random Caprican Culture

Sasha Roiz shares with Show Patrol Blog an incredibly detailed history of Sam Adama's tattoos, as written by CAPRICA's writer/producer Jane Espenson. Impressive!

BSG/CAPRICA executive producer David Eick gave WGA West an interview.

New video: "Hackers Interrupt Buccaneers Promo" - don't miss a single thrilling centum!

Getting ready for CAPRICA

Syfy has posted the entire pilot episode ("Extended Cut") of CAPRICA on their player and on Hulu.



A new videoblog is out previewing the first season, interviewing Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Alessandra Torresani, and many other cast and crew.



ScriptPhD is taking fan questions for an interview with CAPRICA's head writer Jane Espenson until tomorrow.

Vice Magazine and Motherboard are cosponsoring a public screening of the pilot in New York on January 21st, with free booze. Always a good thing. The Tighs would be pleased.

"The Heart of the Female Warrior" - A Sitrep Interview with Mary McDonnell

For the third in the Sitrep's exclusive series of interviews with the participants in this Friday's panel Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon, I had the opportunity to speak with the brilliant Mary McDonnell. By way of introduction, all I'll say is this: Mary McDonnell is President Roslin. She really is that wise and wonderful and thoughtful. At the end of Season 3's episode "Dirty Hands," the Chief sits down with Roslin in her office on Colonial One and basks in her warmth and brilliance. In an interview, Aaron Douglas talked about what a marvelous and moving experience it was to sit down and shoot that scene with Mary McDonnell. That's how I felt.

Can you give us a sneak peek at what you'll be talking about this Friday, at the panel Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon?

The event at the 92^nd Street Y is going to be attended by some really remarkable scientists and thinkers – there's a man named Nick Bostrom, and he's co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association at Oxford; there's a man named Hod Lipson, who works in evolutionary robotics, and his research is focused primarily on biologically-inspired approaches to engineering, machine self-replication—my point is that Michael Hogan and I have been invited to sit on a panel of people who are on the cutting edge of science and physics and futuristic ideas and some of the themes that Battlestar Galactica touched on with cylon technology and its evolution – I believe are the reasons we are asked to sit on this panel. What we will end up speaking about, what our contribution will be, is yet unknown, because what we're there for, I believe, is to provide a bridge between the common man and the scientists who are speaking on such a level that sometimes people shy away from it—discussion of metaphysics or whatever. When you put some actors in the mix, sometimes it helps bridge the gap. And I feel honored, actually, and I'm sure Michael Hogan does too, if you haven't talked to him already – that we get to be that bridge. Battlestar Galactica has opened many interesting doors for us to participate in, help support, help bring audience to—everything from human rights to cybernetics.

Are you up on the current state of robotics?

No, but I'm going to be reading a lot about it this week, and I'm going to be learning about it while I'm there - are you?

I'm not, but I just interviewed Professor Warwick and Professor Lipson, and it's totally astonishing work they're doing. Amazing amazing stuff.

Oh, I'd love to read your interviews.

Well, they're up on the Sitrep.

I'll read them.

Do you have a favorite episode of Battlestar Galactica?

Someone asked me that at the UN event too, and I really don't. I do have favorite moments where we were all on the set, where the entire ensemble was collected, for example, when we landed on the first Earth... (laughs)... the disastrous Earth...we were all there that day, we were all working together, so this sort of collective consciousness of Battlestar Galactica was assembled on a beach on a cloudy day in Canada. There was something so remarkable about actually being in the presence of everyone who had worked on the show – even a lot of people from LA had come up for that particular event. I remember those moments more vividly than some of the others because I was always so respectfully in awe of the ensemble, and quite often didn't get to work with a lot of the people who were on the show. As an actress you kind of relish those moments where everyone's in the same place and you get to observe the ensemble at work. It was really quite exciting. I have many moments like that – I can't really name one episode.

The finale of Battlestar Galactica was very polarizing. Lots of fans loved it; lots of fans hated it. Were you satisfied with the finale?

I loved it. I was very satisfied with it. I loved the sort of simplicity of the ending, to be honest with you, it seemed very simple to me, it seemed very right, that ultimately the simplicity of existence comes from a deep respect for the land and the projection of a peaceful future... and that seems to be what was on their minds, as they finally completed their journey. It seemed to me that each character had acquired that aspiration towards simplicity and peace, and I feel that that was a huge statement to make, after four years of pretty sophisticated battles. And also I was pretty pleased that my character was able to die peacefully, and quite happy, oddly enough – she was happier in the last few episodes on some very deep level than she was at the beginning. What did you think, Sam? Where do you fall?

When I saw it, I was actually really unhappy. For me, the moment of finding the first, devastated Earth was so powerful and so amazing, and so speaks to what I love about the show - and that scene on the beach that you were just describing is my favorite moment in the series - so it felt like a betrayal to find this second earth that's a beautiful paradise. The show had been so gutsy in going after these dark dark things. I guess after going through all that stuff y'all did deserve a happy ending, but it wasn't what I was prepared for.

You were prepared for a more apocalyptic ending.

Yeah...

I understand that.

But the more distance I get from the episode, the more right it feels. I think what I am feeling is mostly just grief at the end of the series.

Also, I think that what you're saying is mostly right on target, because I do think that to a certain extent it's more uncomfortable for us to have happy endings. When you're trying to look at life on this planet honestly, and you're trying to not shy away from the darkness, which Battlestar did not shy away from, to suddenly be led into some kind of very simple light – it is a bit threatening, I think. You do have to get used to it. And because we played it, we were prepared. I do understand how it would make one... initially a bit circumspect.

In popular culture, we always imagine that the robots will want to exterminate us. There’s a real fear that as soon as machines become intelligent, they become a threat to us. Why do you think people have that knee-jerk reaction?

Because I think that we're still trying to struggle beyond fear-based culture. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I do think we're on the brink of it. A lot of what I learned on Battlestar, both through playing Laura Roslin and through being brought out into the culture a bit, through conventions and things like the World Science Festival, is that people are on the brink of giving up their fear. And if we can give up our fear, then the whole concept of the Other as alien starts to dissipate a bit. And if we're willing to risk perhaps giving up our fear of death at the core of all of this, and we start to see life as an ongoing process, that our nominal death is just a little part of the ongoing process, then we won't perhaps continue to project, culturally, artificial intelligence as coming to kill us, or something we have to eliminate at our first glance. I think that's part of where we grew a little bit in Battlestar – the absorption of the alien as the self, rather than the Other or the enemy.

That's a very optimistic and exciting way to look at it!

But don't you think that that is it, though?

I do. I think it's about fear - and guilt, almost, that our own history of oppression is what we see coming back to us.

Yes! That's exactly – I absolutely agree with you, Sam. And I don't think about guilt a lot in relation to this but you're absolutely right, we begin to feel guilty, it's sort of like moving away from tribal thought or clan mentality.. and starting to individuate. Even in my own ethnic background, this sort of very clannish emotional attachment in being Irish, which brings such absolutely beautiful things into my DNA, but there's also things that in order to evolve as a human being I have to almost separate a little bit from - whatever clan impulses are still in my DNA. Which is a long-winded way of saying that you said something I related to.

One thing that I loved throughout the show, from the miniseries to the moment of Laura Roslin's death, is the use of her eyeglasses... I even wrote an article about it. Did that mean anything to you - were you developing the use of the character's glasses to have a specific meaning?

Immediately, Ron Moore recognized them in a certain way, and he pointed out to me that he saw something in the way I used my glasses. And we didn't get too deeply into what he saw, because I didn't want to get self-conscious about it, but they became inseparable from what Laura Roslin needed to get done. I read once in a Buddhist text, and it's something I really responded to, that there's a defensive way and an open way of perceiving life, or meeting life. In an open way, the image is straight back, open front – open heart. In a defensive way, the back is bent and the front is closed. I think the glasses were Laura Roslin's attempt to keep the front open but protect it. It's hard for me now because I'm currently playing a character on The Closer, and I have a new pair of glasses (laughs).

Does it change everything?

As a woman being asked to push the envelope a little bit, in positions of power, I am finding that they've become kind of an important part of my process. There's something so naked about a middle-aged woman's face – I really believe this, and take pride in it, that women communicate the life that they've lived on their countenance. Men absorb the life that they've lived in a different way, it matures on them in a different way. Women's history is more visible on their countenance, so stepping into playing roles that are more traditionally in the male power structure, I find that a pair of glasses, as cliché as it sounds, helps me and the character mask the more feminine response to life, which may or may not be useful in that situation. I've been noticing it – you see more and more female characters in the movies and on television who are in positions of power wearing glasses. And of course we had Sarah Palin. I think it's sort of a collective response, and I think women are feeling it together. I think it's fascinating.

Maybe that's your cultural influence -

Oh, I dont know if it's my influence. I would love to believe that we had that much power, and sometimes I think that we do. I'll tell you I have been to certain conventions with a lot of really beautiful young women showing up in their horn-rim glasses. I always get so tickled by it. So there is something going on.

BSG has this important theme of looking at our history of oppression, owning up to what we have done – as Adama says, “We can't wash our hands of the things that we've done.” I see a similar theme in Dances With Wolves, and this idea of looking at our history in its less flattering light... is that something that's important to you as an artist?

It actually is. And it's become more clear to me through Battlestar that it's been a kind of driving influence. I think as artists we carry different elements inside our talent that are spiritual elements, that we feel consciously or unconsciously as a form of duty. I've met very few true artists in my life who are blithely enjoying the fact that they're artists. Artists really grapple, in general, with a sense of purpose and a sense of responsibility. So what I've noticed over the years in my career now that I've had this very long one (laughs), I've noticed that there is a sort of a pattern, and that my talent seems to spring to life more readily when it's being asked to serve a story that tries to honestly reflect what we really are as humankind, and what we might be, and tries to take responsibility for some of the past, and stand squarely in it. Somehow, whatever talent I have seems to come to life inside of that. And I've had many experiences where I've been asked to play something in other territories that was a bit more entertaining and perhaps a bit more frivolous, and unless it's a flat-out comedy I often don't know how to place myself. So, somehow yes, I think that is important to me.

Are there other lessons from Battlestar Galactica, that the show has to offer us or that it offered to you?

Quite often the viewers of Battlestar, and people such as yourself, would teach us more about the implications of the show than we understood when we were making it. I think that what I have learned as a recipient of all of this discussion and real debate and praise – all kinds of things have come back at us in relation to show, and what it's really put at the center of my being at this point is that if one commits to an artistic endeavor that truly does want to ask the difficult questions, one can become directly connected to the culture in a way that perhaps increases the collective way of thinking that could be very positive. That's what I learned from Battlestar – it kind of strengthened a belief in me that people are really very very excited and willing to change. There's something about pop culture, if used correctly, that can gather all those forces out there, and then bring them to the same place, and the change can maybe be made together. And I've always suspected that that is why we do it, but Battlestar taught me that it truly is an important part and is going to continue to be an important part of the process. I think that starting with cable television and moving into new media, we're entering a whole new age of possibilities. Communications technology is changing what all artists are going to be capable of doing, and the instantaneous access to the audience is becoming very exciting. I also learned that we're entering an age where things are going to move very quickly, so it's really important to get the most correct idea with the most integrity, out there as quickly as possible.

In the episode "Blood on the Scales," in Season 4.5, you deliver this astonishing speech - the one that climaxes with “I'm coming for all of you.” Pulses skyrocketed all across Galactica fandom - it's just the most amazing and effective moment. What was your motivation in delivering and acting that scene?

When I read it, I was so astonished by the bravery of Michael [Angeli] to write that. And I was so astonished that the show and the minds of the show decided to allow Laura Roslin a moment where all her other considerations - the survival of the human race, which was always her driving force, whatever layers that might have grown up underneath that, that might have been political - everything else disappeared for one moment. And the emotional and passionate warrior, the woman who was falling in love, was able to come to the forefront. And threaten to take action that she wouldn't hesitate to do, and she wouldn't look back. And there was nothing intellectual about it and there was absolutely no negotiating. It was like the heart of the female warrior was able to come to the forefront, and all the other layers of Laura Roslin were able to go away. And the thing that motivated me was simply the thought that someone had killed Adama! It was pretty simple. This woman had been fighting a war since the miniseries. So the female warrior had been growing in her. But she was in a political position and she had to – to the best of her ability – be very level. I think the only other time she really lost her temper was with Baltar (laughs), but it wasn't on that level. So I guess, once again, if I can give a simple answer – her motivation was love. The female maternal side, when one of your loved ones is threatened, and in this case it was stated that his life had been taken, the maternal loving aspect of the feminine comes out full force. In this instance it was allowed to. I thought it was written perfectly. That was Michael Angeli – I remember hugging him.

Are you a sci-fi fan in general?

Sci fi the form, or SciFi the channel?

The form. Good qualifier.

When you're living in the channel's world for years and someone says “Sci fi” you think of these wonderful executives (laughs). Am I fan of the form – I am, to a certain extent. I was not a fan of the form, but I wasn't particularly educated in the form. I am beginning to understand life more specifically through the lens of science fiction the more I am exposed to it. And I have to say in all honesty that the people I've met through this experience, who are devoted to the perspective or the lens of science fiction have been some of the most profoundly bright and moving and dedicated that I've met through my life, and I've had a pretty amazing life through my work, I've had the opportunity to meet many creative and really smart thinkers... there's something about the sci fi devotee that is so interested and interesting and willing to grapple and keep the mind sharp. It's not your normal fare. To me it's been really lovely to be brought into connection with people who are thinking about life on that level, and I'm finding myself more and more comfortable with it, and drawn to it, and stimulated by that perspective.

- Sam J. Miller

Coming to the Sitrep: Mary McDonnell

Earlier Saturday, Galactica Sitrep co-editor Sam J. Miller interviewed Mary McDonnell, president Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica, about a variety of topics in the lead up to her appearance next week at the 92nd St. Y as part of the World Science Festival panel discussion: "Cyborgs on the Horizon". (Read Sam's recent interviews with other panelists Hod Lipson and Kevin Warwick.)

Sam is in the process of transcribing his talk with Mary McDonnell, and we'll post the exclusive interview with her here on Tuesday.

Buy tickets for the BSG panel here.

"Humans Have No Chance" - An Interview with Kevin Warwick

For part two of our exciting series of interviews with the participants of this Friday's panel Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon, I spoke with Kevin Warwick, one of the world's leading roboticists. Professor Warwick has done so much amazing work and won so many awards that I couldn't even begin to list them; fortunately, they've already been listed.

Having interviewed three of the panelists at this point, I have to tell you that this panel is going to be amazing. And I'm surprised that the thing has not sold out yet.... so go buy your tickets. You should also check out the other events that are happening as part of the World Science Festival.

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Are you a fan of Battlestar Galactica?

Like a lot of science fiction, I like some of it and some of it I don't like. With any of this, when you're a scientist there's some bits that grate, and some things that you think they get right

What are some things they get right?

The power of the network is something I really like – this idea that networks are not allowed on the Galactica, that they are to be feared. That's something very real. It's only very recently that governments are starting to treat it seriously. It's good to see it reflected in the show, this idea that out of the network comes something you never expected. The human brain is a network, and we can see the power of that. With networks come all sorts of things – you can get signals coming in that didn't expect, and decisions are being made in ways you can't predict.

What don't you like about the show?

This may put me in a bad light with Middle America, but the God angle – the fact that the cylons have a god – I really find that to be grating. Whether that's just about appealing to Middle America or the Bible Belt I don't know, but from a scientific point of view it really grates. I don't want people to think I'm some Mr. Atheist Incarnate - I'm not - but I am a scientist, and for the cylons to be so absolutely certain in their faith doesn't make sense.

Do you think that today's robotics will lead to something similar to BSG's cylons?

It's different, the old military types vs. the new humanoid ones. The military ones, I can understand, because that's what's coming out now in military robotics– machines that can think for themselves and make decisions, and are programmed with a desire to destroy something – and often that something is human. The cylon centurion does come out of where science is now, just extrapolated a little bit forward. That's interesting, that's not so far out of it. But the humanoid ones, while I understand that from an acting perspective it makes a lot more sense, I don't know why that would happen, I'm not completely sold on it. Robots would only evolve into human form if we wanted them around the home or in other civilian uses, and they had to interact... well then they'd need human sensory input to be able to respond, but the uncanny valley seems to dictate that this would not be a good goal. Although I guess we're on the other side of the valley with the humanoid cylons. And the idea that the cylons themselves evolved into human form, instead of being engineered that way by humans, that I have a hard time with. All the work to create AI that thinks like humans – what do we want to do that for? We're missing so much – why do you want to throw away lots of the good stuff and limit yourself to being human?

You sound a lot like the cylon Cavil - in the 4th season episode "No Exit," he rails against the limitations of his humanoid body - how frustrated he is by only being able to see a small fraction of the EM spectrum, only being able to hear vibrations in the air, etc. Do you think that this frustration with our own limits is part of what it means to be human?

Discontent is part of being a human, but there's no reason it couldn't be part of being a cylon. We're seeing it even in monkeys. The creativity isn't on a par with humans, but it's there. It's a human downfall, that we do want to develop and grow. [Editor's Note - check out Warwick's comment in an earlier interview - "There is no way I want to stay a mere human."]

How is it a downfall?

Well, look where it takes us. If you develop and keep developing artificial intelligence, at one point it's bound to be more powerful than human, especially if it is being developed to out-think and outperform humans. So up to a certain point you can use these machines for a specific purpose, but beyond that...

Beyond that it could be trouble? Again and again in science fiction, we see robots waging war on humanity. Why are we so fascinated with that potential outcome?

Well, I actually think it is a realistic possibility. If you base it on humans, and look at how we have been ourselves, when one group has come across another one, there has almost always been some kind of a battle, with one side trying to destroy or consume the other. Even with the Aztecs and Incas, often one group is wiped out. Looking at the group that was destroyed, from the outside, you can reflect and say they are typically culturally more advanced... they had better drainage systems, education, social order; but the others came along with better weapons and they wiped them out. So particularly if the machines or cyborgs we are looking at were created from humans, and even more particularly if it was created from military background, they could very well say “What are we listening to the humans for? They can stay in zoos or colonies, but if they try and fight back we'll destroy them.” And if that happens, I'm afraid the humans have no chance.

Why not?

Robots have the advantages of computer thinking, and the power of the network. We see it with the cylons. If your brain is linked into the network – if you can share thoughts, and download your thoughts into the next version of yourself – you can learn and evolve much faster. Just on communication alone, humans are so backwards - our form of interaction with other humans is absolutely pathetic.

Battlestar Galactica asks us to take a really hard look at this question of what it means to be human. How does your work ask or answer that question?

I would ask the opposite question – what is it like to be a machine, a robot, a cyborg... My research is about seeing the opportunities that it presents, but it's also about trying to see how the other side of thinking – how humans think. Take things like the question of multiple dimensions; you say to someone “if we link up to a computer, we can see ten dimensions” and they say “what's the point of that? the world is three dimensional” - because as a human, your understanding of the universe is shaped by your limitations. You think that the world is as you perceive it. What my work does, and science fiction does, is it gets us to look at what it means to be human by looking at it through the eyes of a robot, or a cyborg, by looking at our own limits. Some science fiction people are very interested in my work, and how it's related to science fiction, and how it is bringing science fiction to life – other people in the science fiction world are very unhappy with it, they want sci-fi to just be sci-fi, something separate. If it stays within the world of fiction, they can deal with that – but thinking about it as something real, it becomes too scary. Which is kind of the point of my work.

To scare people?

I think one of the purposes of my work is to make people think about the consequences. Like we discussed already with the idea of the network, and the dangers that come along with it. I want to show people the power as well as the dangerous potential, and to show people that it is technically possible to do this. If you can plug into a network, and your brain can control a wheel or another machine, but your brain is networked, what could happen?

Are we close to that—being able to network the human brain, control machines with it, etc?

It's something I have already done - as an experiment, of course, but in terms of having it in the shop at your local corner, its on the horizon. From a military perspective it's definitely on its way. Instead of visiting other planets, you can stay here but your mechanical body explores other places. People worry about the dangers of having electrodes in your body, but you have to balance that with the dangers of being in space or on the battleground, and of course the relative dangers are quite small.

So we create artificial intelligence to do the work that humans just can't do.

Like in Battlestar Galactica, with the first cylons particularly – it is a potential reality. Maybe not exactly in terms of how BSG portrays it, but it's not bad at it. We send them off to another galaxy and they come back with a vengeance. Some people have suggested that the robots will be sent off into the universe with their backpacks because of the advantages they have. We have this obviously huge problem, traveling such vast distances, so we need to come up with ways around it. What is it called, on BSG - the FTL drives? And Star Trek has the warp drives. So we either figure out how to fold space or jump into other dimensions, or we send the cylons out.

What will your presentation focus on, at the 92^nd Street Y event “Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon”?

I think my perspective will be much more reactive; looking at “what is a robot” “what is AI,” in relation to Galactica; I will be talking about my own work, not just the cyborg/implant work, but developing the biological brain, the robot brain, robots with biological brains. This ties in with Galactica in terms of Mary McDonnell's character, who had cancer but was cured by the blood of this human/mechanical hybrid – and that's what we're doing; working with stem cells to grow the robot brain for medical purposes. There's a lot of potential for this kind of work in areas like Alzheimer's; can we use this to overcome the effects of diseases like that. So that part really struck home; the show really gives scientists ideas.

Do you have a favorite character on Battlestar Galactica?

I really go for the cylons; I'm not a human supporter. I enjoy listening to what the cylons are doing, how they deal with things. One thing the show does really well is getting humans to respond to the cylons, using the cylons to look objectively at the humans. It's almost making fun of humans, and the ways we think.

===========

- Sam J. Miller

Evolutionary Robotics and Battlestar Galactica: an Interview with Hod Lipson

Here at the Sitrep, we're really excited about next week's phenomenal-sounding event Battlestar Galactica: Cyborgs on the Horizon, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, co-presented with the World Science Festival. Not only is it an opportunity to hear Mary McDonnell and Michael Hogan talk seriously about their characters and the show and the issues that it raises, the panel includes some of the most important scientists in the field of robotics, talking about the state of the field as well as the technical and ethical challenges that come along with it.

I had the opportunity to interview one of the panelists, Dr. Hod Lipson, about Battlestar Galactica, what real-life robot evolution looks like, and what it means to be human. Professor Lipson's work feels stunningly fresh and important; I've tried to provide lots of links throughout the interview, so that you can read up on what he's talking about. I hope that my transcription of our conversation can communicate a fraction of the excitement and energy and passion and accessibility that Dr. Lipson conveys when he discusses his work; if my conversation with him was any indication, next week's event is going to be really astonishing.

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Are you a fan of Battlestar Galactica?

Absolutely - I was familiar with the old one, but I've only recently been introduced to this one. And I've been watching it pretty much constantly for the past weeks. But I still have a long way to go, so I am trying very hard to avoid finding out what happens.

What do you like about the re-imagined show?
One of the things that I like is that it's different from a lot of science fiction - Star Trek, Star Wars - in that it's very realistic. But there are also a lot of things that are interesting to me as a roboticist - the show's take on robotics is very forward looking, but also takes into account a lot of possibilities that are often ignored in other science fiction stories.

How does its perspective on robotics relate to your own work?

At our lab, we work on evolutionary robotics - this idea that instead of designing robots the traditional way, where engineers work towards a specific concept, we let it happen via evolution. And that's very similar to what we see in Battlestar Galactica - this concept of robot evolution, of robots left to their own devices and improving themselves. Both in terms of the tasks they set for themselves - programming themselves, as opposed to carrying out human commands - and also in their physical forms; in this case, the cylons evolving into a humanoid form.

How does evolutionary robotics work?

We create a primordial soup of components, with bars, and motors, and neurons, and we let them connect and permutate... We set basic tasks, like learning to move. The evolution that we see is unguided; a process of natural selection takes place; initially, all of our robots are completely random, junk, neural networks and limbs connecting in ways that dont make any sense. So they continue to mutate, putting themselves together and taking themselves apart in thousands of random ways. And after hundreds of generations, you might have a single piece that vibrates, and that's an exponential improvement. So that piece will be copied by all the others in the next generation, each one trying out new variations... and more evolutions will take place... And after thousands of generations you get interesting machines that move in blind and simple ways...

[Editor's Note - for a concrete look at evolutionary robotics in action, including video of one of these organically-developed robots learning to walk in a terrifying-but-tragic sort of way, check out this lecture that Dr. Lipson gave in March of 2007]

Twenty years ago, processors were a lot slower, and it would take a couple weeks for each generation... With today's computers, we can go through a thousand generations in a couple of hours. It's conceivable that in a hundred years, with faster processors and simulators, you can see vastly complex mechanical organisms evolving.

Theres a controversy between our evolutionary approach and that of traditional robotics engineering. Traditional roboticists say we can design better robots from first principles, if we work according to a plan. We say that this approach works to a certain extent, but as robots become more and more complicated, we will eventually need to let them evolve and solve their own problems. In our own research, we're seeing robots that are figuring out laws of motion and physics on their own. They catch up, they build knowledge, they exhibit behavior that we would traditionally attribute to human creativity. One concern that people have with evolutionary robotics is that you lose a little bit of control over what you get, and how it behaves.

And we see that in Battlestar Galactica...

This is also reflected very interestingly in the cylons [the raiders] which are metal on the outside and have a bio-organic structure on the inside. That's very much like what we see. Our robots tend to be very organic in structure, with parts spread out throughout the body in a nonstructured way, like organic life forms. So, take a battery for example. A traditional battery is crisp and structured, but the ones that we generate tend to be very unusual, gooey.

In science fiction stories like Battlestar Galactica or Karel Capek's R.U.R, there's a real fear of artificial intelligence - this popular belief that as soon as machines become intelligent, they become a threat to us, and their first instinct will be to wipe us out. Why do you think people have that knee-jerk reaction?
I agree that hostility to artificial intelligence is most people's response, and I'm not sure why. Basically, I don't think that a robot uprising is the way it's going to go. As robots become more and more complex in their thinking, they're also going to inherit all the aspects that come with increased intelligence. Intelligence is not just being smarter. Humans are more emotional than other animals - they can be depressed, they can question their existence - they are also more compassionate - they can feel empathy, and identify with other humans, whereas animals cannot identify with other animals. So as machines become more intelligent, you'll see all these same things evolve. In fiction, future robotics systems generally do not take this into account. But Battlestar Galactica actually captures some of that idea. The cylons have internal controversy, within themselves as individuals and as a society. There's no reason why an intelligent race would be unified or monolithic in its thinking... Anything with that level of complexity is going to have the same kind of diversity of opinions and passions as humans do.

These days, it seems like the bulk of research is happening in military robotics. Why is that, and should we be worried?
Any kind of research is driven by funding. The Department of Defense is the biggest sponsor of robotics research. In the end, however, if you're developing AI for robotic systems, you'll run into the same basic questions and problems whether it's for search and rescue missions or for cleaning your house. And I think that the military focus in robotics is going to change. In Japan there's a major push for robotics research into care for the elderly... and we're just now starting to see the development of housecleaning robots, which is something we've been promised for decades, right? These are all an amazing new frontier, and it's proving that there's commercial viability for robot research beyond military applications.

One of the fascinating things about Battlestar Galactica - and good speculative fiction in general - is that it helps us to answer this really challenging question of "what does it mean to be human." Which is sort of like "who am I," "what are we here for," "what is the meaning of life," and all these very existential questions that we as humans are constantly asking ourselves. How does your work help to answer these questions?

Some of our work is about self reflection - about creating machines that can create models of themselves. They have a sense of self-image, and can think through different scenarios and and evaluate what will happen to it, and what course of action it should follow. Current machines cannot evaluate their own existence. Meta-cognition is said to be unique to humans and some higher primates.

So - robotics in general has two purposes. One is its practical application, the use you put the robot to - taking care of the house, etc. The other is to help us think through questions of human performance, identity and consciousness. Thats why I'm interested in robotics. We all have these questions, and you can talk about it in philosophical or abstract terms... or you can try to build a machine that can do it. When you actually need to build a robot that will do these things that we conceptualize as human, it's very challenging. Because you can't cloak it in abstract terms like creativity anymore. You have to hard code it down to the nuts and bolts. Robotics is a bare-bones way of discussing very challenging and abstract questions. As basic as robot intelligence is now, it's already helping us understand these concepts from a very bottom-up and rigorous way.

What are you going to be talking about at the event next week at the 92nd Street Y - Cyborgs on the Horizon?
This same idea of self-reflection, and how that's key to what's happening in Battlestar Galactica. The overarching question or issue is that this is a very powerful technology, and there's lots of ethical questions, beyond the technical one. Should we do this? Will it go out of control? One of the nice things about the series, and this particular event, is that they bring these questions out into an open discussion and dialogue. It creates an exchange of ideas between scientists and the public, so we can see together where this technology is going...

-- Sam J. Miller

Sackhoff

Katee Sackhoff with Jace Hall.

Ron Moore forum Q&A

Many things that you guys have been discussing here this week, were addressed in this Q&A Ron Moore did the other night on the SciFi.com BSG forum.

Food for thought...

All This Has Happened Before...

Another topic thread for you folks: at BATTLESTAR's end, Baltar, Caprica Six, and their "Head" dopplegangers were explained...sort of. What did you think of these revelations? Are we seeing angels? Demons? Projections? Hallucinations? God(s)? Aliens?

I'd like to quote BSG/CAPRICA writer/producer Jane Espenson here, from a Q&A she did at Boston Globe's Viewer Discretion blog earlier today:

Question: Starbuck an Angel??? Really???

Espenson: I'm going to answer re Starbuck and the "head" people, too. Well, here's how I always saw it. If someone from a far-advanced culture somewhere in the universe took an interest in humanity, isn't it possible that with their advanced tech that they could have abilities that would seem to us miraculous. Maybe we'd think of them as "Angels." Maybe they're the whole reason we have a myth of "Angels." But that's just me. The great thing about great novels (or tv series) is that some things are left open to your own philosophical solutions.



...That final ending was an image that Ron had in his head since Season One, which amazes me. He always felt that the show ended with a Six and a Baltar walking through Times Square.



Question: I was wondering if the angel Baltar in Times Square was actually Lucifer.

Espenson: I can see that -- there is something very much like the ol' bar bet about Job going on there, isn't there? There's something very appealing to me about Head Baltar having been the original source for the Lucifer character.

Question: ...I'm still a bit stuck on the Kara Thrace story...I don't make the conection on how she was the "Harbinger of Death" - it would seem that she was quite the opposite. Can you elaborate?

Espenson: I took that to be a reference to the fact that she led us to the place at which (pure) humanity ends -- from here on out, what we call human has Cylon DNA in it.

Schmoes Know

Katee Sackhoff was also interviewed by Schmoes Know:






ETA: Part 4:

Start Tonight

Drinking, that is. Why the frak not.

::pours you some Ambrosia::

New favorite words: DRUNKALOGUE, OCTOCYLON

Sackhoff Frak Party in Portland

I am quite sure we'll be seeing the official, higher quality video of Katee Sackhoff's appearance at the Cort & Fatboy Portland Frak Party from last Friday....but for now, fans SlyOyster and ninjahq posted a ton of video snippets on their youtube channels...I hear the show was huge fun and totally packed, with many folks turned away at the door.

ETA: Here is SlyOyster's blog post about the event (spoiler warning) and links to all his youtube vids.

Thoughts on Daybreak

I highly recommend Mo Ryan's excellent article on Daybreak Part 1, in the Chicago Tribune. Mo quotes from a prior interview she did with Ron Moore talking about the finale:

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.

Mo also references an interview Ron did with Alan Sepinwall:

In an effort to assess where we stand, here's a list of questions that Moore told Alan Sepinwall would be addressed this season. Let's see what is still left on the list: (Ron's answers in bold.)

AS: The identity of the final Cylon, we will find this out?

RDM: Yeah. [Mo here: Answered -- Ellen.]

The origin and nature of the Final Four and how they're different from the rest of them?

Yes. [Answered.]

The origin of the rest of the skinjobs?

Yes. [Answered.]

What happened to Earth and what happened to the 13th Colony?

Yes. [What happened to Earth -- Answered. What happened to the 13th Colony -- partly answered or fully answered? The 13th Tribe, the Cylons, left Kobol and settled on Earth.]

Who, if anyone, is orchestrating all of this?

Basically, yeah. I don't know if it's going to be wrapped up in a neat bow. The show has an answer for it, whether it's a satisfying answer, I don't know. [Not answered yet]

Will "All this has happened before and it will happen again" be explained in some way?

Yes. [I'd call that partly answered -- there have clearly been Cylon and human wars for hundreds or thousands years. Do you consider this question answered?]

The opera house?

Yes. [Not answered yet.]

What happened to Kara when she went through the Maelstrom?

Pretty much. [Not answered yet. I'm guessing she was a beneficiary of the kind of "organic memory transference" technology that the Final Five used, but we don't know for sure.]

Identity and nature of the "head" characters?

Yes. [Not answered yet. I'm guessing they're Cylon projections of some kind.]

Tigh and Six's baby, and whether that means Cylons can breed?

Yes. That's not a "yes" to whether they can breed -- the question will be answered. [Answered.]

The fate of Boomer and whether there are other 1's, 4's and 5's floating out there?

Yes. [Answered. Boomer, as well as Cavil, Simon and Doral (at least one of each), are all aboard the Colony.]

Roslin's health?

Yes. [Not fully answered, but it's not looking good.]