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A Battlestar Galactica Prequel Series on the Way

Posted by Zonk on Thu Mar 20, 2008 08:21 AM
from the they-evolved-they-have-a-plan dept.
Media Television Sci-Fi
kumasame writes "The Sci Fi Channel has announced it will create a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, as the series enters its final season. The two-hour pilot for the production, called Caprica, is expected to be shot in Vancouver this spring with shooting for the series to follow. The first episodes are expected to air this fall. In a Q&A session held yesterday, the creators and stars of the show revealed a number of tidbits of information about the new show and last season of BSG."
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Submission: Good News Everyone! BG prequel on its way! by kumasame (1077765)
[+] Entertainment: Battlestar Galactica Comes To an End 852 comments
On Friday evening, Battlestar Galactica ended its four-season run as one of the most popular science fiction shows in recent history. 2.4 million people tuned in for the finale, and reactions to the ending — positive, negative, and often a mix of both — are springing up all over the internet, as are tributes and retrospectives. Producers Ron Moore and David Eick held a Q&A session after the finale to discuss certain aspects of the story and spell out the final status of several plot lines. Fans of the show will have a chance to see the Cylon side of the story this fall in a two-hour TV movie titled "The Plan," and we've previously discussed the spin-off prequel series, Caprica, the pilot for which will come out on April 21st. Be warned: these links and the following discussion will contain spoilers.
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  • Warning: Spoilers (Score:5, Informative)

    by alnya (513364) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:25AM (#22805572)
    Just in case you haven't seen the complete last series, there are some major spoilers in the linked article.

    • Re:Warning: Spoilers (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ginger Unicorn (952287) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:36AM (#22805668)
      FUCKING HELL. You go to the trouble of RTFAing before reading the comments, and it's too late to know that there is a MASSIVE SPOILER halfway though the article. I was sure i'd seen the entire 3rd season so it must be a 4th season spoiler.

      GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

      PUT A SPOILER WARNING IN THE FUCKING ARTICLE SUMMARY PLEASE! Everyone needs to tag this SPOILER in the meantime.

    • Re:Warning: Spoilers (Score:5, Funny)

      by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:42AM (#22805714)
      Indeed.HUGE spoilers. Don't RTFA, really.

      The problem with BSG has always been that if you miss even one episode, you're screwed trying to re-establish continuity; and now this new news that Optimus Prime is a Cylon is just the last straw.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cvas (150274)
          WARNING! I QUOTE THE TITLE AND OPENING BLURB OF THE ARTICLE!! IF YOU DON"T WANT THOSE SPOILED BEFORE YOU GO TO THE SITE, STOP READING!!!!

          I guess you missed this part:

          The streaming revelation along with other show secrets and anecdotes, was revealed last night at the Morgan Library during a panel discussion with series executive producers David Eick and Ron Moore and nine of the show's stars.

          More news on a confirmed BSG prequel, identifying the final cylon and what it's like to find out you're a toaster, all

  • That's a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:31AM (#22805626)
    The miniseries and first season of BSG was probably the best science fiction even made for television. But it has declined significantly in quality since then. I'm actually glad this is the last season of the show (since it allows them to give a definite conclusion to the series before it declines even more, and gives them a focus that they lacked in season 3). Making follow-up movies or series is a mistake, and it would only tarnish the name of a once-brilliant series.

    • Re:That's a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fifedrum (611338) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:44AM (#22805728) Journal
      I want to respectfully disagree with the opinion that the series is in decline, but I can't, except to qualify it: decline of quality to any degree that matters. IMO, when we compare this series to any other on television, even the lowest quality episode is better than the best quality the rest of the dial has to offer. I believe the intensity of the plots and story lines ebbed and flowed and will peak in season 5 as a natural part of telling this story, and that this isn't taking away from the impact the series had in season 4, or as it moves into the last season. I agree that all episodes aren't created equal. I do definately get the impression they blew their wad in the mini-series and season 1... Even still, this is the first time I've ever watched a television show and literally sat on the edge of my seat fully captured by the story.

      • Re:That's a mistake (Score:4, Insightful)

        by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:54AM (#22805814)
        Well, yeah, it's relative of course. It's sort of like pointing out that "The Simpsons" has declined in greatly in quality. Even at their absolute worst, they're still better than 90% of everything else out there. BSG is still easily one of the best TV series of all time, even with the decline. But in the miniseries and 1st season, it was THE best TV series of all time.

    • Re:That's a mistake (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jollyreaper (513215) on Thursday March 20 2008, @10:59AM (#22807272)

      The miniseries and first season of BSG was probably the best science fiction even made for television. But it has declined significantly in quality since then. I'm actually glad this is the last season of the show (since it allows them to give a definite conclusion to the series before it declines even more, and gives them a focus that they lacked in season 3). Making follow-up movies or series is a mistake, and it would only tarnish the name of a once-brilliant series.
      The show had huge potential going in. It has great actors, high production values, and just has a very authentic look. You can buy this is happening. The only problem is that the scripts are all over the fucking place. They're Stephen Kinging it, working without an outline, making stuff up as they go. You have two characters locked in a room, one who has a gun pulled on the other and a genuinely good reason to kill him, something from the past. That reason should have always been there up to this point in the show, influencing motives and actions. Something like that can't just be pulled out of the ass like "Oh, yeah, by the way, remember when it was me who killed your family? Sorry about that." The only thing that the writers can genuinely change their minds on is whether the guy with the gun does or doesn't shoot the other guy.

      I do appreciate the idea of keeping show uber-arcs shorter so they can be punchier, more energetic. I hate it when shows go flabby at the end, churning out piles of drek episodes nobody wants to see. Better to go out with a bang! The thing is, with a premise like BSG, it's perfectly possible to tell additional stories within the setting, in effect keeping the same time slot but cycling out actors and production staff so the energy could be kept fresh. The West Wing sort of did this with seasons 6 and 7, most of the action occurring outside of the White House with main characters shuffled off the board, new ones coming in. If the producers so desired, they very well could have kept the show going with a Santos presidency, naturally swapping out much of the cast and bringing in new energy and ideas.

          • Re:That's a mistake (Score:4, Informative)

            by electrictroy (912290) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:32AM (#22806194)
            Well.

            British citizens insist I say "series three" when discussing Doctor Who, or "series one" when discussing Torchwood. And that's fair because both are British shows. I respect that. ----- Therefore it seems reasonable that when discussing American or Canadian shows, you use the American/Canadian designations of "season".

            Respect flows both ways.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by elrous0 (869638) *
        Actually the "torture of prisoners" issue was dealt with in Season 1 as well (in "Flesh and Bone"). The problem isn't the way they deal with controversial issues (though it is getting a little heavy-handed); it's in the general writing, weak pacing, and lack of direction. For one thing, season 1 had a good mix of different kinds of episodes, to give the viewer some breathing room. Bleaker episodes like "33" and "Flesh and Bone" were occasionally offset by more upbeat episodes like "Hand of God" and "Colonia

  • And, this series will explain (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:35AM (#22805652)
    How Starbuck became Darth Vader.

  • "Hillary's the final cylon." (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiredog (43288) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:42AM (#22805706) Journal
    Thanks for the spoiler guys!

    That explains so much...

  • Lets call it a "do over"` (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shivetya (243324) <shivetya@@@archonon...com> on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:43AM (#22805720) Homepage
    because the show jumped the shark in the third season killing off Starbuck only to show her coming back next season.

    Really, I was enjoying the show very well until deep into the third we had four lead character singing that damn song and Starbuck dieing and coming back.

    Caprica - subtitled "Oops, sorry 'bout that"

    • Re:Lets call it a "do over"` (Score:5, Interesting)

      by magarity (164372) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:05AM (#22805928)
      and Starbuck dieing and coming back.
       
      There wasn't a body - she just disappeared. So whether she was killed or not is left to your imagination. Maybe she fell into a trans-warp dimensional flux rift in spacetime or somesuch Star Trekish thing.
       
      Also, remember the prophesy the priest revealed way back when they were still at Kobol: a renegade demon will lead the way to Earth. Has everyone just assumed that referred to a Sharon?
       
      Personally, I'm still holding out for Ellen to be the final Cylon. She was too much of a mess otherwise.

    • Re:Lets call it a "do over"` (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kalirion (728907) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:07AM (#22805944)
      I never understood myself how they made the connection from having a song stuck in their head to being cylons.
      • Is Buck Rodgers next?


        Only so long as they can get someone who can approach Erin Gray [wikipedia.org] in natural beauty when wearing a metallic full-body jumpsuit.

  • Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colonel Korn (1258968) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:49AM (#22805768)
    I think that a lot of the backlash against BSG in the last season was the product of the discomfort a lot of us geeks have toward religion being mixed into our scifi. I think that BSG's main mistake, if I can call it that, is being off the air for so long between seasons. It really breaks up the narrative flow and serves to make us effectively forget what the cliffhangars from the previous season were.

    • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tmalone (534172) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:02AM (#22805892)
      I think you're partly right about that. I also think that having the humans become terrorists during the occupation made many people uncomfortable. I also think that the series of craptacular single-shot episodes in the middle of the third season made many fans leave the show. Some of those episodes (the factory ship episode comes to mind) were so inane as to be almost unwatchable.
      You're right that the huge gap between seasons is bad for business. People who aren't devout followers of the show are simply going to forget about it.

      • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Xelios (822510) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:40AM (#22806270)
        I think the bit about humans becoming terrorists was one of the best plot points of the 3rd season. It made you question this preconceived notion that terrorists are somehow inherently evil, that there's such a thing as "good people" and "bad people" and that "good people" would never do what those "bad people" are doing. The events on New Caprica wanted to show that "normal" people could resort to terrorism given the right conditions, and how acts of terrorism just don't seem quite as barbarous when it's your side that's being oppressed.

        Disclaimer for the DHS: I do not condone terrorism, thanks.

        • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Funny)

          by discord5 (798235) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:57AM (#22806476)

          Disclaimer for the DHS: I do not condone terrorism, thanks.

          Disclaimer for the parent: we don't read your disclaimers anyway. We'll be meeting soon.

        • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tmalone (534172) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:57AM (#22806482)
          I agree that it was one of the best plot points. I think many people were a little put off by it though. This is especially true of people who saw Battlestar as an allegory for 9/11. This ruthless other (that turns out to be a bunch of religious fanatics) comes to wipe out "civilization" and now the humans are on the run. Then it turns out that when the going gets tough, some of the humans turn to terrorist acts. I can see that being a little upsetting to some people. In fact, I witnessed this in the reactions of some friends who were shocked at twist in the story.
          This is what makes the show so great: it doesn't pull any punches. The writers don't seem to care about destroying people's conceptions of who is good and who is bad.

    • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xeth (614132) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:17AM (#22806048) Journal
      Except that religion was a part of it straight through the Kobol arc in the first and second seasons (which was, IMHO, one of the best parts of the series,and many people agree). No, the problem was that they just did a bunch of one-off episodes with no real resolution or consequences. E.g. (Season 3 spoilers follow): The return of Bulldog and revelations about corruption and warmongering in the admiralty. That went nowhere. The killing of Sagittarons? Swept under the rug and forgotten. The unhappiness and emerging classism in the fleet? 10 second resolution at the end, and not a peep since.

      • Re:Geeks Afraid of Religion (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tmalone (534172) on Thursday March 20 2008, @10:09AM (#22806636)
        The one-offs could have been okay if they hadn't been so horrible. I think the problem with the one-offs is that the writers don't know how to write a one-off. They start on the episode like any other episode that will have consequences, then they get to the end and realize they aren't allowed to change anything, so they just end it and return everything to normal, despite the massive internal changes that occurred. Either that, or they farmed out the writing to a bunch of hacks, because some of those episodes were just poorly written.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nine-times (778537)

        (Season 3 spoilers follow): The return of Bulldog and revelations about corruption and warmongering in the admiralty. That went nowhere. The killing of Sagittarons? Swept under the rug and forgotten. The unhappiness and emerging classism in the fleet? 10 second resolution at the end, and not a peep since.

        Yes, but then again, is this far from real life? Warmongering goes on, and the warmongers don't get punished. Ethnic cleansing gets swept under the rug. The inequity of classes goes ignored, unnoticed,

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by tmalone (534172)
        I think the unsettling part of BSG's dealings with religion lie in the context of the show. Religion on B5 never seemed as nefarious as is does on BSG. It was more of quirky thing, to give each race character. In BSG you have a full blown clash of the civilizations: monotheists versus heathens. That can get pretty touchy and hit a little too close to home. In many ways that makes the show more effective, because the religion aspect is a lot more touchy. In B5 you never got the feeling that the Vorlons and S

  • Spoilers in the article! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Millennium (2451) on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:12AM (#22805984) Homepage
    And in this post as well: Six kills Dumbledore.

  • Letterman's Top 10 Reason to Watch Last Season. (Score:4, Informative)

    by antdude (79039) on Thursday March 20 2008, @10:35AM (#22806988) Homepage Journal
    RedLasso [redlasso.com] has a video clip of last night's David Letterman's top ten (3/19/2008). It shows the ten cast members in their show outfits. Each one said a reason. Seen on SciFi. Here's the text version [cbs.com] if you don't want to watch the video clip.

    • One of the best series ever put on television (Score:5, Insightful)

      by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:43AM (#22805716)
      It's funny, I expected to really hate it too. When I heard they were remaking Battlestar Galactica and casting Starbuck as a woman, my first thought was "Oh great, another cheeseball, politically-correct retread that pales in comparison to the original." Boy was I wrong. At first I wasn't even going to watch the miniseries, but at the last minute I decided to and it absolutely floored me. It was one of the most aggressively brilliant pieces of television I have ever seen, before or since.

      It was also the first serious attempt to deal with 9-11 that anyone had done up to that point, and it was absolutely gut-wrenching. The idea of tying the premise of a fairly cheesy 70's TV series into 9-11 now seems so obvious, yet who would have thought of it at the time? There is no way you could have made this remake at any other time, or gave it that kind of brutal impact. The shot of those nuclear explosions blanketing Caprica left me just stunned. And seeing that Raptor lifting off and leaving Helo behind was heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time.

      And, amazingly, it got even better in the first season.

      • Re:One of the best series ever put on television (Score:4, Insightful)

        by electrictroy (912290) on Thursday March 20 2008, @08:49AM (#22805766)
        Where's the 9-11 connection? I don't see it.

        I see lots of connections to WW1 and 2 however.
        • It has explosions, no other TV show ever had that before.
        • >Where's the 9-11 connection?
          Not so much 9-11 per-se. More the general 'war on terror'. You have an 'enemy' living amongst you at look like you but want to do you harm. Add in state sponsored torture, questions about what is acceptable in war versus peace time and so on. When thy spent some time living on New Caprica there was the issue of one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.

        • Re:One of the best series ever put on television (Score:5, Informative)

          by elrous0 (869638) * on Thursday March 20 2008, @09:04AM (#22805912)
          If it wasn't blatantly obvious to you, even on the first viewing, then I can't help you. But there are tons of interviews with Ronald Moore and David Eick where they elaborate on this, if you really need them to draw you a picture. Here is a good quote from Moore that sums it up nicely:

          Looking at it in a post-9/11 world, brings with it a different resonance than it did [in 1978]. It's a surprisingly dark premise. Twelve entire planets are wiped out in the pilot; entire civilizations destroyed and the survivors are on the run from the enemy. They're not heroically doing anything except trying to survive and hunting for a place called Earth... In the original version, where the characters are coming to peace, and in the version I want to tell where they are at peace, suddenly this bolt from the blue happens and it just shocks their collective psyche in a very profound way... What happens to the people in Galactica is what happened to us in September, but in several orders of magnitude larger. It's sort of like saying September 11th happens, but the only people who survive are the people inside the Twin Towers. So it feels like what we'll be able to do is play out the psychic and emotional reverberations of that kind of an apocalypse through the characters and through the series.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by jedidiah (1196)
              Good point. This whole "they are among us" hysteria isn't just limited to 9-11.

              People in general (especially teenagers) just tend to be self centered and
              think that they are the only people since the beginning of time that have
              ever "suffered" in the same way. As far as the WWII connection goes, there
              were concentration camps set up in the US to deal with the whole "they are
              among us" hysteria. Just ask George Takei.

              We need a spoof where communist pod people start replacing Cylons...

                • Re:One of the best series ever put on television (Score:4, Insightful)

                  by shinma (106792) on Thursday March 20 2008, @02:46PM (#22810702) Homepage
                  The destruction wasn't really the part that makes it resemble 9/11. It's the tactics of the governments, the treatment of the military, and of course, the paranoia over who is and who isn't a Cylon (terrorist) that does.

                  The Cylons are largely religious zealots, the humans are doing terrible things largely out of fear, and they're damaging their own liberty and sanity to do so. The entire series is a statement on the war in Iraq.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ravergonemad (512740)
          I do think there was one connection, the wall of pictures of family members lost as they hope they are still alive, seems chillingly similar to pictures posted in NYC after the attacks.

        • Re:One of the best series ever put on television (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Hal_Porter (817932) on Thursday March 20 2008, @11:23AM (#22807624)

          Where's the 9-11 connection? I don't see it.
          Cylon suicide bombers because they have no fear of death due to their fanatical belief in an alien religion? Cylons making a dramatic surprise attack that causes a liberal democracy to become markedly less liberal and start torturing its opponents?

          Naah, you're right, no 9/11 references at all.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by elrous0 (869638) *
            I still can't believe that people can't see this. They made it about as blatantly obvious as they could have without having the residents of Caprica wearing "I Love NY" t-shirts.

            I really do think that most people suffer from an innate inability to see beyond the most basic literal level on anything they encounter. As Lex Luthor once wisely said "Some people can come away from reading War and Peace thinking it's a mere adventure story."

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BlackSnake112 (912158)
      One other thing that I've been wondering about. If the Chief is a cylon, is his new wife a cylon? If not then they also have a cylon/human hybrid.

      And also, who tipped off that there were 12 models?

      But...
      Remember how the cylons keep saying that all this has happened before? Maybe the cylons are trying to figure out what happened/ where they could have done better and this is all a cylon simulation. Everything. The cylons recreated people from the past (all cylon) programed to be those real people. So the ent

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Culture20 (968837)
        I've been thinking that since the mini-series. I can't wait until the end of this series to see if they rebuild Caprica again.
        I'm hoping that the end-goal of the hypothetical simulation is to find earth. Lets say that maybe this series _does_ have a tie into the original series: The humans in the original series escaped and found earth, but only a few Cylons followed. Now, the Cylons don't know how to get to Earth, so they decide to make similar cylon-humans to try and do it for them (then fake-chase t

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