And So It Begins...

Above is a photo posted to Twitter by SyFy exec Mark Stern of a Blood & Chrome production meeting. You can see David Eick to the immediate right of the frame. (click to embiggen.)

And here's the new rookie viper pilot William Adama, call sign "Husker" to be portrayed by Luke Pasqualino:


Entertainment Weekly broke the casting news:

Syfy has cast Luke Pasqualino (Skins — U.K.) as Adama. While Ben Cotton (Hellcats, Riese) is the other lead, playing Adama’s commanding officer.

First, here’s some official character descriptions that give you some new details about the show:
Pasqualino will star as the young, talented fighter pilot William Adama, a recent Academy graduate who finds himself assigned to the newest Battlestar in the Colonial fleet: the Galactica. Full of ambition and in pursuit of the intense action that the Cylon war promises, Adama quickly finds himself at odds with Coker (Cotton), the battle-weary officer to whom he reports. With 45 days left in his tour of duty, Coker desires an end to battle just as much as Adama craves the start of it. Though they clash at first, the two men forge an unlikely bond when a routine mission turns dangerous and becomes a pivotal one for the desperate fleet.

Blood & Chrome is set during the 10th year of the first Cylon war. The show will debut with a two-hour pilot on Syfy, executive produced by David Eick.

Several sites have read the script for Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome either in full or in part, and if you click on the following links you will find spoilers here at, io9, Trek Web, and Spinoff Online. Readers are reacting positively to the storyline as Charlie Jane Anders wrote:

The best thing I can say about Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome is that it feels like BSG. More than the BSG TV movies, more than Caprica, this feels like the gritty, intense show about real characters in impossible situations that we fell in love with. Of course, this time around, we’ll know how everything turns out in advance — but the journey may actually be pretty gods-damned compelling, judging from these pages.

In other news....

Check out this highly detailed map of the Twelve Colonies that you can order from Quantum Mechanix.

Ronald D. Moore's original Series Bible for Battlestar Galactica has been leaked online, and reveals the original shape of the show and the plans for the first season. (Or is this the real show Bible?)

CNN profiled Jane Espenson.



Katee Sackhoff and Tricia Helfer were recent guests at the Women of Sci-Fi Expo in Texas where they talked to fans and did an Acting Outlaws live stream.

And Jamie Bamber has a new BBC show, Outcasts which looks to have some BSG qualities. Watch the trailer here.

Jamie Bamber on Dollhouse

Jamie Bamber guest starred on the season 2 debut of Dollhouse on Fox joining his BSG co-star Tahmoh Penikett. Maureen Ryan reports that Michael Hogan will guest in the 3rd episode this season.

And Maureen Ryan expertly runs down everything that BSG cast members, writers, and directors are up to these days.

Excuse My French

hobbitofkobol has a ton of great videos from the recent Jules Verne Festival in Paris, including video of the main BSG event with James Callis, Jamie Bamber, and Mary McDonnell. And an exclusive interview with Mary McDonnell.

Viva La France

Jamie Bamber, James Callis and Mary McDonnell will recieve the Jules Verne Award Sunday, April 26, at Paris Grand Rex theatre as part of the Jules Verne Film Festival. And guests will have the chance to see projection on the big screen of the episode of "Finale Saison" Daybreak. (And let me say, seeing the finale on the big screen is the way to go.)

The festival also has an advance screening of J. J. Abrams' Star Trek later that Sunday. A big day for SF fans in Paris. (And Trek Movie's Anthony Pascale has a mostly spoiler free review of Trek here.)

Appearances

Battlestar Galactica Stars Hit Villa Night Club in West Hollywood. 03-23-09



Jamie Bamber At "The Damned United" World Premiere - London

Law & Order London

Jamie Bamber talks about Law and Order: UK.

Apollo Bear

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has just begun a new campaign to stop the use of black bear fur for Queens Guard caps... and Jamie Bamber is their spokesmodel.

ETA: see a video of Jamie discussing the issue here.


The campaign is timed with the premiere of LAW & ORDER UK, which just began airing over the pond in England. Eagle-eyed fangirls over at BamberNews have noticed that the season one DVD (UK version) is already available for pre-order at Amazon UK, with an announced release date of June 15.


Jolly good show Bamber!

Interviews

Bunch of good interviews floating around today...

• Mo Ryan talks to Jane Espenson about "Deadlock" (with a few supplementary questions from Alan Sepinwall)...and to Tahmoh Penikett about BSG and his new show DOLLHOUSE.
  

• Thanks to Morjana for finding these Space/Circuit interviews with Michael Hogan and Jamie Bamber.  (And thanks to Space for letting us lousy Americans get your stream this time!)
  

• Much to our collective luck, Bear McCreary continues to interview cast & crew for his season 4.5 blogging -- this week he talks with Michael Hogan. 
  

And congrats to Aaron Douglas, who has a new CTV show THE BRIDGE which has just been picked up for American broadcast on CBS...

Situation Report

A ton of interviews and news items....

Richard Huff of The Daily News spoke to Kate Vernon. Rick Bentley of McClatchy Newspapers talked to Vernon and Ron Moore.

Tahmoh Penikett has been doing lots of press to promote BSG's final eps, and the debut of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. He talked to Timeout Chicago, Zap2It, and the Boston Herald.

Kat Angus of Canwest News Service interviewed Katee Sackhoff about the end of BSG and the beginning of Lost and Found. (And Starbuck makes a top ten list.)

Jamie Bamber reflects on the end of BSG and promotional photos of his work on Law And Order: London are online via pu5h1n6_da15135 of the BSG LJ blog.

Aaron Douglas spoke to io9 about the final 5 cylons, and the the endgame for the series. (No spoilers.)

Kandyse McClure talked to MediaBlvd Magazine about her end on Battlestar Galactica, and her new work on Children of the Corn, and other projects.

Galactica TV has recent interviews with Grace Park, Jane Espenson, Nicki Clyne and Micheal Tayles.

Dean Stockwell is scheduled to appear at the upcoming Leap Back Quantum Leap Convention in Los Angeles, California, March 27-29, 2009 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Quantum Leap.

Other news and notes: Kevin Smith mentioned BSG at a talk at Ohio State University... Battlestar Galactica leads in shout-outs on other TV shows (like The Office.) ...Dvice's Steampunk Cylon contest continues... Viper cars, and bento boxes...

Upcoming comic books continue the story of BSG and Cylon history, in Ghosts and Cylon War.

Commentary track for 414

The "enhanced" episode with commentary is on Hulu and SciFi.com, and the commentary podcast is now up on iTunes and the SciFi.com RSS page. I don't know if it was the gin and tonics, or "MrsRon's" presence, or all the discussion of sandwiches and the BSG Auction...but this was one of my favorite podcasts in quite some time. Two things one might consider newsworthy in the 414 podcast: Moore bought Baltar's cigarette case from the auction; Terry Moore seemed to indicate that Moore will be directing again quite soon.





Also on iTunes this week: Celebrity Playlists from Jamie Bamber, Katee Sackhoff, and Michael Trucco. [HT to bsg blog] ...OT: For you LOSTies in the house, they also posted lists from Michael Emerson, Evangeline Lilly, Naveen Andrews.


Other great links after you have seen ep 414:

• Mo Ryan, bless her heart, has another interview with Ron Moore discussing this week's show.

• Bear McCreary has posted his weekly exploration of the music for this week's ep, and includes comments from Ron Moore, Richard Hatch, and Alessandro Juliani. Bear also mentions a portion of the Baltar prayer meeting sequence that was cut from the version we saw on air.

• This is just another frakkin great interview with Michael Hogan. And here's another.
  

Items of Note

Ronald D. Moore previews his BSG directorial debut, "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" for Sci-Fi Wire:

Sci-Fi Wire: What can you tell us about the episode? What kind of story is it?

Moore: It's a character piece. It's a smaller show; I designed it deliberately to be that way. I wanted to take a breath after the events, the shocking events, of the past couple of episodes. Things were happening huge. Revelations were coming one on top of another. And now I wanted to do a smaller piece that was just about people on the ship and where they are in their lives before the next giant arc just sort of pulls them along into even bigger events.

Ron also discussed Caprica:

Sci-Fi Wire: What's happening with Caprica?

Moore: Caprica is getting underway. We're putting the writers' room together as we speak. It's very exciting. It's a very different challenge. It's a very different show. I think there's a sense of "Well, Battlestar has set a very high bar." That makes everybody have to bring their A-game, and I think that's the spirit in which we're approaching Caprica.

Sci-Fi Wire: Knowing that you had Caprica on the horizon, did you hold back at all on wrapping up the Cylon mythology in Battlestar Galactica in order to give fans an incentive to tune into the new show? Or does Battlestar Galactica settle it for everyone?

Moore: Galactica is going to pretty much settle it. Caprica will be about how the people on the colonies developed the Cylons. And that has its own story to tell about how that came about. But in terms of the larger mysteries and mythologies and hows and the whys and how everything lays out on Galactica, we set out to answer as many of the questions that we could by the end of the show, and that's what we did. We didn't hold anything in reserve and say, "Oh, well, we'll deal with this over in Caprica."

Matt and Nat of the BSG Cast review Sometimes A Great Notion, and Nat talked with Battlestar Galactica's costume designer, Glenne Campbell in Pasadena at the site of the prop and costume auction.

Jamie Bamber spoke to TV Guide about working on the final episodes of BSG and what it was like to say goodbye to the show.

Sci-Fi Wire talked to Kandyse McClure about her arrival at closure for her work on Battlestar Galactica.

Bryan Lambert shares his thoughts on Dirk Benedict.

BSG effects artist Mojo about working on BSG for the last time.

See also, a slew of science fiction links.

Los Angeles Times <3 BSG

The LA Times Show Tracker blog is taking fan questions for, well, apparently the ENTIRE cast and all the producers of BSG. Seriously. Go here and leave some; you never know who they’ll interview next.

The blog just published interviews with Jane Espenson and Richard Hatch, one assumes there is much more to come.


Sitrep was a tad remiss this past month and didn’t mention that the LA Times print edition also showed BSG some massive love in late November, when they decided BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is one of the main sci-fi franchises of our day. On November 23rd they published an entire Sci-Fi Movie/TV themed issue of their Sunday Calendar section. Yoda, Spock and a Cylon graced the front page…



On the next page was this Jamie Bamber interview…



And the cover article continued inside with more BSG photo goodness…



Also in the issue was a piece speaking with Dave Howe of SciFi (formerly known as the Sci Fi Channel), waxing poetic about BATTLESTAR GALACTICA coming to an end and how much it has effected their network. By very little coincidence, the CAPRICA pickup was announced a week or so after this issue hit the newsstand.

Keep that love flowin’, LAT…

DVD clips online

io9 has an exclusive clip from one of the 4.0 DVD extras, with footage of David Eick and Mark Verheiden discussing the show.

Youtuber kdlmd243 has posted these four clips from the DVD extras.

Towels

Well my WGA Strike panel yesterday was quite an experience, and it was a thrill to finally meet in person someone who is partially responsible for making my favorite TV show, look them in the eye and shake their hand.

There was a lot of fascinating discussion on the panel with Mark Verheiden and Jeffrey Berman (co-founder of UnitedHollywood and creator of the Pencils 2 Media Moguls strike action), as well as the other strike-related panel that featured Berman and Michael Coulton (one of the quick wits responsible for the "AMPTP.com" parody site). Apparently the conference-holders recorded the panel audio and will be posting it soon; I'll let you know.

Mr. Berman tells me he never heard back about what happened with most of the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fans who won Pencils 2 Media Moguls prizes. If any of you winners out there want to submit some details and stories to us (at bsgsitrep at gmail dot com) about your prize wins, we will make sure Mr. Berman receives them.

One short anecdote I need to share with you guys. At one point I was prompted to discuss the BSG fan response to the Pencils 2 Media Moguls campaign. I explained about the infamous "towel scene," and the fans' response to the towel prizes. Mark Verheiden then pointed out that he happened to be the writer of that episode. His comment: "You should see the out-takes."

Apollo and Starbuck join Dick Wolf's police force

News this morning confirms that both Katee Sackhoff and Jamie Bamber have taken new roles as police on TV.

The Hollywood Reporter today announced Sackhoff has been cast as the lead in a new show from LAW AND ORDER creator Dick Wolf, called LOST AND FOUND:

The hourlong "Found"...centers on Tessa (Sackhoff), an offbeat female LAPD detective who, after butting heads with the higher-ups, is sent as a punishment to the basement to work on John Doe and Jane Doe cases (source)...

[Pilot writer] Chris Levinson says the show will distinguish itself from other crime shows by featuring a healthy dose of dark humor and by the lead character's distinct lack of resources: She works out of a basement office with little support from the department. (source)

ETA: The Ausiello Files is reporting that, possibly due to this new role, Sackhoff's part on next season's NIP/TUCK has been recast with Rose McGowan. Darn it!


Meanwhile The Guardian recently reported more details about Bamber's character on ITV's new show LAW AND ORDER UK:

The UK version of Law & Order, which follows the work of police on the street through to legal action by the Crown Prosecution Service, starts filming this month.

ITV1's 13-part series stars Bradley Walsh, who has also featured in Coronation Street, Torn and The Old Curiosity Shop, as Ronnie Brooks, "a real East End copper's copper." He is partnered by Jamie Bamber, perhaps best-known as Apollo from Battlestar Galactica, as Matt Devlin, who tackles crime using "part seduction, part force."

The pair report to Detective Inspector Natalie Chandler, played by Harriet Walter, whose credits include Atonement. Law & Order's legal side, featuring the workings of the CPS, is led by the Doctor Who and Torchwood actor Freema Agyeman as the "hard-working, strong-willed" prosecutor Alesha Phillips. The lead writer on the UK show, Chris Chibnall, has credits including Life on Mars and Torchwood.

ITV1's Law & Order is based on the highly successful US version, created by Dick Wolf, who has also worked on Hill Street Blues, and will be co-produced by the UK company Kudos, Wolf Films and NBC Universal.

Battlestar is a Franchise For The Future

There is an Associated Press article that popped up yesterday, and is making its way around the media and the internet today, discussing the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA franchise and ratings.

The writer points out that the BSG film, and the prequel pilot film CAPRICA, have been produced despite lowered Nielsen ratings over the life of the series. Meanwhile, BSG actor Jamie Bamber and writer/producer Michael Angeli chime in about BSG fans, our viewing habits...and, no surprise for we fans, the meaninglessness of premiere night Nielsen ratings to BSG viewership.

Jamie Bamber...has a much better way to gauge ratings. Turns out, as the ratings plummet, the show's popularity continues to skyrocket as it reaches the end of its five-year run early in 2009.

"When the numbers were high I would get stopped in the street maybe once a week," Bamber said. "Now that the viewing figures are lower on the TV, everywhere I go someone will come up to me and say what a huge fan they are. That just tells me that people watch the show in a more modern way and that it has reached its sort of critical mass."

...Co-executive producer Michael Angeli thinks the [ratings] are irrelevant, however. He believes most "Galactica" fans have atypical viewing habits and take advantage of new technology to watch the show whenever they want.

"I think we were one of the first ones," Angeli said. "TiVo had just sort of taken off. This was four or five seasons ago, and because we were on Friday nights most people, most fans don't watch it (on first run). They TiVo it and watch it a zillion times."

Angeli comments a bit more on CAPRICA:

While the [BSG] movie is a lock to air, the fate of "Caprica" remains to be decided. The pilot has been shot and screened, and there's a trailer up on YouTube. Angeli is helping with early scripts in case the series is picked up and said the show is an almost complete departure from "Galactica."

"In fact, I don't think we ever go into space," he said.

...Like "Galactica," which took on war, terrorism, torture, religion and questions of morality, the storyline in "Caprica" will have many things to say about our society.

"It's really about big business, the machinations and the subterfuge that go on inside of it when you have something that is groundbreaking and could change the nature of life and the future," Angeli said. "In this case, they're developing artificial intelligence."

While other networks continue to make baby steps in regards to putting new TV shows online the same day as broadcast, there is no denying that (American) BSG fans got something pretty special this year with the same-day online broadcasts of new 4.0 episodes on Friday mornings. Let's hope they continue that trend for season 4.5...

ETA: The Media Loper posits further on this topic, declaring that BSG has a higher "Fan Quality" than most TV shows (or franchises), which allows NBCU to greenlight more stuff for us. So say we all.

Fanvid: a Leland tribute

By xGriiFin. [Tip o' the hat to gdg]

Apollo Bar

What Superhero power would BSG's Apollo, Jamie Bamber want? TVGuide.com asked a bunch of Comic Con attendees this exact question. Check out this video briefly featuring Jamie Bamber, Tricia Helfer, Rainn Wilson, among others in San Diego:

Watching Kristen

E! Online's Watch with Kristen has some BSG news in their Spoiler Chat Q&A:

Mena in Los Angeles: I just read that Battlestar Galactica will air its "final, final" season in January. Any hints on what to expect?

I can tell you that when I asked Jamie Bamber about the last 10 episodes, he was positively effusive. This wasn't just an actor reading his lines flogging the show—he was truly in awe of the final three eps. According to Jamie: "They're amazing. Ron's finale is just sensational. All I can say is they're well-deserving of being the last episodes of Battlestar Galactica." So excited! Also, by the by, Jamie's wife is just about the coolest girl you could ever meet. She's the kind of girl who tells you that you have something in your teeth before you interview her husband and helps you get it out...(Not that that happened to me or anything. No thireee! Wait, thorry...need to get this rathpberry theed out of my teeth...No siree!)

For a really big spoiler/speculation about a possible fate for Number 3 Lucy Lawless, read Kristin's full report, and scroll down a bit to find it.

In The News

Sci-Fi Wire and Buddy TV talked to Jamie Bamber about the big Galactica finale, and his upcoming new series in London, Law and Order: UK.

Variety reports that BSG's uber director Michael Rymer is set to direct a new feature film for Platinum Studios, Inc., Top Cow Productions and Arclight Films of the comic book Witchblade. Rymer also recently wrapped production on "Revolution," a two-hour series pilot for NBC Universal Media Studios and the Sci Fi Channel.

G4 and CVG report that former BSG writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle are scripting a first person shooter video game set in the Alien universe called Aliens: Colonial Marines.

BSG fan Joss Whedon recently explained what's going on with the shooting of a new pilot for his upcoming Fox series Dollhouse, co-staring Tahmoh Penikett. Maureen Ryan talked to Whedon after a tour of the Dollhouse sets to get further information.

Jenna Busch of UGO talked to Grace Park about BSG and her new show The Cleaner. Grace Park was also profiled by FHM.